


Sanctuary

by luthorienne



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Gen, discussions of religion and spirituality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-05
Updated: 2013-11-05
Packaged: 2017-12-31 13:25:13
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,058
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1032195
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/luthorienne/pseuds/luthorienne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Clint and God tell each other they’re sorry, and are reconciled.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sanctuary

He had always loved Venice.

Paris, with its soaring tower and white stone buildings like pressed sugar, and London, all staid grey stone, seemed somehow remote from him, but Venice had always been his: the small, crowded medieval streets, the hidden passages from square to square, the buildings fawn and faded and moss-clad, almost drab on the outside, alive with marble and mirrors and luscious colours inside, and always the lapping water, rippling and gleaming and whispering in his peripheral vision. Venice was his.

And of all the streets and squares in Venice, of all the canals and secret gardens, this was his favourite place: the Church of St. Sebastian, twice-martyred saint, patron of soldiers. He stood in the shadows at the edge of the campo, looking up at the façade that had stood for more than 460 years in this spot. Its age reassured him: in a world where few good things lasted, Chiesa di San Sebastiano had endured. 

The massive double doors were locked, of course – it was nearly three in the morning – but he was, after all, who he was, and that presented no difficulty. Inside, he crept into the darkened nave, slipping along the wall to the aisle end of a pew, deep in the shadows. All around him, he knew (though he could not see) were the jewel colours of Tintoretto, Titian, and Veronese. The vaulted cavern of the nave echoed every soft sound in the stillness of deep night. It smelled of age, and wax, and incense and the breath of prayers that must have been soaking into these walls for hundreds of years. It would sustain him, for a few moments, at least. He let his head fall back against the pew, feeling the quiet age of the place enfolding him like a comforting blanket.

God had not entered into his life until his ninth year, except as an epithet. Madame Zoltar had given him God along with good food and a living example of what courage could do. Although he had not devoured God as ravenously as the goulash, still he had loved the stories she told him of Daniel facing down the lions like Mr. Stanley did in the center ring, and Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego all snuggly and warm in the fiery furnace, the way he sometimes longed to be warm. She was Greek Orthodox, but since they rarely entered a town with a Greek Orthodox church, she attended Roman Catholic mass, and sometimes if his work was done, she would take him with her. God and Madame Zoltar wrestled constantly with his sins. She knew he tried to do the right thing, and she understood and forgave him when sometimes he couldn’t do the right thing. He took her word for it that God would, too.

It wasn’t all one way, of course. Sometimes Madame was impatient with him, or scolded him when she was angry and it wasn’t even his fault. Sometimes she couldn’t say she was sorry in words, but she would make him a sweet dumpling, or give him money for a storybook, and he understood that was her ‘sorry’. He always forgave her. And sometimes God was unnecessarily cruel, let mean things happen to him, or to people and things around him. Once in awhile, he thought God was saying ‘sorry’, like the day he’d found the bird on the sidewalk, stunned – dead, he’d thought – from striking a store window. He’d been angry with God then, wondering why He would hurt a little bird when He was supposed to be keeping His eye on the sparrows. But as he’d held the bird and warmed it in his hands, it had stirred and quickened, and in a few moments, he’d opened his palms and let it fly away. That, he thought, was God’s apology, and Clint forgave Him. But that had been twenty-five years ago, and he and God had had a lot of water under the bridge since then. 

He sat up, sighing, and bent forward to rest his forearms on his knees, letting his eyes close and pressing his thumbs to the bridge of his nose in a vain attempt to quell his migraine. He was beyond tired. He needed sleep, and food and probably a couple of units of blood, and it was unlikely he’d get any of that until well after extraction, which wasn’t going to happen before tomorrow night. 

He sighed and stood, stretching his back and shoulders, ignoring the burn of the knife-slash in his side. The best he could do, he thought, was to find a safe place to tuck in for the next twenty hours or so, when his extraction team would finally arrive. The safehouse was blown, and checking into a hotel would be a mistake; Hydra had its tentacles everywhere, and there was no way he could pass as an innocent tourist, not with blood crusting his side and his face bruised. No, what he needed to find was some out-of-the-way storage shed, or –

Or perhaps some quiet, little-used crawlspace in Chiesa di San Sebastiano. 

He prowled the aisle, using a penlight to search the walls and pillars until he found what he needed: a ledge above the columns just before the apse opened out. He felt the slash over his ribs open again as he pulled himself up, but it couldn’t be helped: he needed to get up out of sight before the priests and altar boys arrived to prepare for morning Mass, and he was tired enough that he wasn’t sure he could wait much longer. 

The ledge was better than he’d hoped: nearly four feet wide, easily eight feet long, almost completely enclosed on the nave side by stonework, and partly enclosed on the aisle side by wooden lattice. No light shone on this spot, and he could tell from the musty smell that he was probably sharing space with a pious family of churchmice, but he had slept in worse spots before. Crawling into the enclosed part of the ledge, he lay down on his uninjured side, pillowing his aching head on his arm, ignoring the thought that, if he should be tracked here, he would be cornered. He hadn’t been followed. He was better than that. 

The bells woke him from a fitful doze near 8:00, and he lay drowsing, watching the celebration of the Mass for two dozen of the faithful, mostly women wearing scarves and carrying market bags. He amused himself making up sins for them as a few filed into the confessional, one after another. Tourists began arriving at 10:00; he hadn’t counted on that, but they were drawn to the paintings: Paolo Veronese’s masterworks, and the Titians and Tintorettos, and no-one looked upward at his dark and dusty niche. One unruly child raced up the aisle, shoes clattering on the stone floor, but she was quickly caught and scolded by her obviously-not-Catholic American mother, and Clint lay undiscovered. 

Shortly before three, raging thirst and an urgent need for a bathroom brought him out of his nest in the lull between clots of tourists. He made his way unseen to a bathroom probably used only by celebrants and then slipped back into his place, gliding silently through the church, keeping to the shadows and giving the confessional a wide berth, unsure if the priest remained there. Hunger was eating him from the center outward, but there was nothing to be done about that; someone on the extraction team would have something he could eat. He’d been hungrier than this, and longer, in his childhood. 

He wasn’t sure if it was hunger or blood loss that was making him queasy and light-headed; or maybe it was both. His hasty examination of the knife-slash during that surreptitious trip to the bathroom told him it wasn’t too serious, but it was painful and the skin around it was red and puffy, and he saw antibiotics in his future. He was a little feverish, his eyes burning and his skin sensitive, and not just around the slash. His shirt and jeans were soaked and stiff with blood turning near-black as it dried, and he was chilled, both from blood loss and from lying on the stone. But there was nothing to be done about that, either, and he closed his eyes, willing himself back to sleep. He needed to pass a few more hours – by midnight, he could come out and start making his way to the Grand Canal. It would be dark, and maybe he could pick up a candy bar or something where no-one would pay too much attention to his battered face. 

A sixth sense woke him in the silent darkness, and he checked his watch: 11:30. He sat up painfully, working his hands carefully to ease the cold-stiffened joints. A single lamp glowed on the altar, casting deep shadows. Clint crawled to the open end of his nest, trying not to notice the pain of the slash. Then he froze, looking down from his nest at a man – a priest – sitting in a pew just below him.

“Are you in trouble, my son?” the priest said softly, not looking up. Clint swallowed, debating for a moment, but it was clear he’d been blown. This whole mission had been one big ball of wrong. And it looked like his luck wasn’t changing, either. At least Italian was one of his better languages.

“I’m waiting for friends who’ll take me home, Father,” he replied. “I don’t mean any harm to you or the church. I just needed a safe place to wait.”

“You’re hurt?”

“I’m – yes, a little. It’s okay. My friends will take care of it.”

“You need shelter from – who? Police?”

“No, not police.” How could he describe Hydra to this old priest? “From a gang of men. They do bad things. I came to stop them.” It was oversimplistic, but he really wasn’t up to a lecture on geopolitical forces of evil.

“And why do you choose this place to hide?”

Clint bit his lip. This conversation was surreal.

“St. Sebastian is the patron saint of soldiers,” he said. “I’ve been here before. I came seeking a peaceful place to gather my thoughts. Then I thought this would be a safe place to wait for my friends.”

“You are a soldier. Are you a Catholic?”

Clint thought about it for a moment. 

“I – I was cared for by a Catholic woman. When I was a child. I’ve followed her teachings.”

The priest bowed his head.

“I see. Do you wish to make confession?”

No, thanks, was his immediate thought, but then – He thought about Madame and how peaceful she always seemed after confession. There were things he couldn’t say, of course, but –

“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned,” he said softly, haltingly, remembering the words Madame had told him. “It’s been –“ He paused. He’d never really done this before. “This is my first confession…”

When he was done, his cheeks were wet, and he thought maybe the priest’s were, too. The old man sat in silence for a few moments, and Clint wondered if the church would want to visit some awful punishment on him for his bloody hands. 

“My son, you are a soldier,” the priest said finally. “Do you believe in your heart of hearts that this terrible work you do is just? That the cause you serve is just?”

He thought about it: about the human traffickers, the terrorists, the alien monsters, the drug and prostitution kingpins SHIELD had sent him out to stop. 

“I do, Father,” he said finally, wiping his face with his palms. “I wish I didn’t have to do it. But somebody has to.”

“Then you bear no stain upon your soul,” the priest said. “God has need of soldiers to do His work, my son. St. Sebastian, St. Michael, St. George – They bore terrible burdens in the name of God. As do you.” He rose. “Say a prayer each night in the memory of the woman who raised you. I will leave you now, so you can meet your friends.” He moved away toward the nave, as Clint prepared to descend. Before he could come down, though, the priest paused. “And remember, my son – St. Sebastian is also the patron saint of archers.”

**Author's Note:**

> The Church of St. Sebastian in Venice is a beautiful place you should visit if you ever have the opportunity. I’ve never examined it for hidey-holes large enough to contain a wounded archer. It was founded on a much older site: a hospice dating from approximately 1393. My thanks to Father Paul for his response to a combat soldier in confession.


End file.
